Things Change

Guns.com Vault
Gather App
biku324

biku324

Gold Supporter
Joined
Jan 27, 2011
Messages
9,331
Reaction score
21,312
City & State/Province
NM - Land of Enchantment
I grew up with WWII Pacific Theater veteran great-uncles in the family; imagine my surprise to see today that Japan, our economically strongest Pacific ally near China, is selling 10 Mogami-class destroyers to Australia in it's first post-war sale of the kind.

Things change.

Australia will upgrade its navy with 11 frigates from Japan, Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles said on Tuesday.

"This is clearly the biggest defense-industry agreement that has ever been struck between Japan and Australia," Marles said.

The 10 billion Australian dollar ($6.5 billion or €5.6 billion) deal saw Mitsubishi Heavy Industries awarded the tender to supply Mogami-class warships, beating out Germany's ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems. https://www.dw.com/en/australia-to-buy-11-advanced-warships-from-japan/a-73528732
 
Last edited:
Yep. My father fought in the Pacific in WWII as well. Then I spent most of my adult life in Japan, marrying and having kids, and now grandkids, there...

It's only been very recently, beginning 2014, with further revisons loosening export control in 2023 and 2024, that Japan has changed its laws so that it allows itself to export defense items/weapons platforms.
 
Onomea said:
Yep. My father fought in the Pacific in WWII as well. Then I spent most of my adult life in Japan, marrying and having kids, and now grandkids, there...

It's only been very recently, beginning 2014, with further revisons loosening export control in 2023 and 2024, that Japan has changed its laws so that it allows itself to export defense items/weapons platforms.
Click to expand...
The Japanese aid program JICA has provided the Philippine Coast Guard a number of good vessels and training over the past 10 years as well.
 
It was long ago in an economics class where the prof pointed out that losing WWII let Germany and Japan build their industries from near ground up without having to deal with the issues of what we'd now call "legacy manufacturing". I got a first person example of this decades later. In the 80's, I was working for a fortune 500 company and most of the machine tools in that plant had plaques that said "Made to the Standards of the War Production Board". There was exactly ONE modern machine tool. I've always regretted not taking a camera in and taking pictures of some stuff-still in use-that dated to early 1900's-if not before.
 
Last edited:
WR Moore said:
It was long ago in an economics class where the prof pointed out that losing WWII let Germany and Japan build their industries from near ground up without having to deal with the issues of what we'd now call "legacy manufacturing". I got a first person example of this decades later. In the 80's, I was working for a fortune 500 company and most of the machine tools in that plant had plaques that said "Made to the Standards of the War Production Board". There was exactly ONE modern machine tool. I've always regretted not taking a camera in and taking picture of some stuff-still in use-that dated to early 1900's-if not before.
Click to expand...
I can remember as a kid some items came from Japan and was marked "Made in occupied Japan!''
 
Rudi said:
Australia is buying attack submarines from us. That whole neighborhood is arming up. China wants to control the world, and will if not kept in check.
Click to expand...
This. Thank goodness the Japanese have had the good sense to change their laws and have the industrial capacity to supply the Aussies with what they need. There was never a chance the US was going to supply any ships due to lack of industrial capacity. Worse, the USN can never get ships on time and on budget thanks to continual specification drift and the resulting rising costs.
 
My Dad was in the Korean War and I went to Korea in 1973, twenty years after the ceasefire and it was like a third world country.

When I got off the Northwest Orient airliner at Osan AB there was a ROKAF F-86 parked off the runway as well as a halftrack. (I flew home a couple years later on Flying Tigers Airlines.)

Fast forward fifty years. Now Korea builds their own weapons, in fact they’re exporting tanks to Poland. They also build fighter jets and submarines.

Meanwhile the US is in decline, submarines wait for years before they get around to overhauling them. I guess a lot of young people in this country have gotten too comfortable being paid to do nothing other than to bother other people…
 
LVSteve said:
This. Thank goodness the Japanese have had the good sense to change their laws and have the industrial capacity to supply the Aussies with what they need. There was never a chance the US was going to supply any ships due to lack of industrial capacity. Worse, the USN can never get ships on time and on budget thanks to continual specification drift and the resulting rising costs.
Click to expand...
There was a big brouhaha between the US and France several years ago when the Aussies backed out of a contract with the French for conventional subs and contracted with the US for nuclear subs.

The French were absolutely livid, saying they were willing to supply nuclear subs as well, that the Aussies had no business abrogating their contract with the French, and that the US, as an ally, had no business encouraging the Aussies to switch.

After all this, I read in the paper the other day that the US was now considering delaying the Aussie contract because we need more subs ourselves and we have limited capacity to produce them.

If that comes to pass the French will certainly be pleased to get back into it, but it will be yet another blow to US credibility (or what is left of it) with our allies...
 
Last edited:
Beemerguy53 said:
The decision by the United States Government to rebuild the defeated Axis nations after World War II, and to imbue them with elements of our Constitution and system of government, was one of the wisest and shrewdest things this country has ever done....
Click to expand...
TOTALLY AGREE! Nothing is more expensive, or stupid than war.
 
Read an article in the WSJ yesterday about shipyard maintenance delays here in the US and how it's affecting readiness. My experience is that one thing planners NEVER take into consideration is called "emerging scope" work. This is when routine maintenance reveals issues that have to dealt with. This can involve readily available spares, but can sometimes involve parts that were expected to last the life of the item. As a result, they can be scarce, leading to delays while the part is sourced. Or, in some cases, manufactured. In a worst case scenario, one has to find another entire component to replace whatever can't be fixed. [Or, rescued in an improvise, adapt, overcome manner-if that'll work.]

I lost count of the "3 week jobs" I was involved in that turned into 3-6 month extravaganzas. I got a warning on the first one when looking at the flow chart for the project. Per the chart, we'd completed our work 6 weeks before we arrived. Then there's dealing with work that was...less than stellar when originally performed. Or the dreaded low bid items.
 
Last edited:
Onomea said:
Yep. My father fought in the Pacific in WWII as well. Then I spent most of my adult life in Japan, marrying and having kids, and now grandkids, there...
Click to expand...
Likewise in my family. My Grandfather ended up with Japanese grandkids.

I recently read an unofficial history of a battle his U.S. Army unit fought against the Japanese Army. Frankly it was a slaughter. Determined men on both sides, but decidedly one sided.

Love thy enemies comes to mind.

I lived in Honshu in 1980s. The 40-50 year old something folks would talk, albeit briefly, about their war remembrances. The older generation refused to - most had lost considerable parts of their families to the bombing. You would get that from their kids, always communicated out of their parents’ view.

Fast forward to the present day, the U.S. has a very serious weakness in naval ship construction and maintenance. As noted earlier, the U.S. is wavering on a plan to add nuclear submarines to Australian naval capacities. The Japanese naval construction capacity is a strategic resource for all of the free world nations in the Western Pacific.

Related, the Center for Strategic and International Studies did a war game series around a blockade of Taiwan. 🇹🇼 A video summary was released last week -
 
Things change.........
People change........
A lot of folks lie.........
Get use to it, as there is not much we can do about it.
We voice our opinions, and the lawmakers do what makes them rich.
We vote those lawmakers out, and elect new lawmakers.
But all we seem to be doing is making new rich lawmakers.
I think term limits and complete finanical disclousre going and coming for the lawmakers.

But then what do I know???
 
As a very smart man once said,"the hands of the people will always be kept far from the levers of power".
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

M
March 17 1942 : M'Arthur arrives in Australia as Allied Commander
Replies
0
Views
671
mikepriwer
M
P
Record numbers now licensed to pack heat
Replies
10
Views
3K
Pasifikawv
P

Latest posts

Back
Top